No matter how innocuous some might feel ad messages are, it takes someone to switch around a brand’s associations to reveal just how ingrained they are in a culture’s psyche.

Take Ronald McDonald. Family-friendly clown, right? In directing collective h5’s short film Logorama the mascot becomes a cursing, machine gun-wielding robber to cage-rattling effect.

Logorama plays with an array of logotypes to tell a hardboiled cops-and-robbers story with a literally earth-shattering twist. Like all great heist flicks, the city is both backdrop and character and in the case of Logorama it too is made entirely of logos.

“The story had to take place in LA,” explains director François Alaux. “The perfect grid of the city, represented by the Burberry pattern logo, and the permanent earthquake threat matched with the concept we had in mind from the beginning: the opposition between order and disorder,” adds co-director Herve de Crecy.

The film also plays with the theme of perception versus reality.

“People don’t realize they’re facing another reality behind the smiling icons they see everyday,” says Alaux. “You can drill for oil but have a green and yellow flower logo, [making people] feel like they’re in a field full of flowers. That’s no more and no less the kind of trick that we used in Logorama – this time not to tell a happy and smiling story.”

H5’s own story didn’t end happily. At the film’s recent UK premiere, the trio, which included Ludovic Houplain, announced they were splitting. Houplain will keep the h5 moniker, while Alaux and de Crecy will work as a duo under Little Minx.

“François and I were extremely happy to collaborate with Ludovic all these years, and we’re proud of the films and artwork we’ve produced,” says de Crecy. “I can’t tell in which direction h5 is going to roll. On our side we have projects in mind, maybe longer format, and we’re still excited by working on music videos and commercials. I’m sure both h5 and the two of us will continue to work hard on ways to produce good films.” Q

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